Sharing. One of the lessons that parents wish they could teach their children at a very early age, yet one that seems to take ages for them to really get to grips with. I find myself at playgroups with Master C regularly telling him to “share nicely” with other children and at home I’m constantly telling both children to share their toys.
In This is My Rock a young goat stands at the top of a rock, telling anyone that dares to come near that this is his rock, and most definitely not their rock. A bear, an eagle, all the other goats and even a tiny bird are all sent away by the goat as he stands firm at the top of his rock. All alone.
But, as time moves on, the goat begins to realise that it’s not much fun being all alone at the top of a rock. In fact, it can be rather lonely, and he is also starting to get rather hungry too…
The artwork in This is My Rock is bold, with quite a modern twist. The colours seemed quite unusual, in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on until I read the accompanying press release and learnt that it was printed in 4 spot colours which gives it this unique colour palette. The text is brief, but to the point. All of it is speech meaning that when reading it with a young child you can spend a while almost acting out what is happening whilst talking about the setting and the feelings of the characters involved. This small amount of text also means that it would be ideal for young children who might lose interest with a longer book.
I sat and read this with Little Miss C (who is four and a half) and she quickly understood the message it was trying to convey and also compared it to another book with a sharing message that we have read together – Michael Rosen’s This is Our House, which is much more story led – and started talking about the similarities. I’m not sure that Master C (at two and a half) is quite ready to sit and take in the sharing message quite yet (he prefers books where he can recognise what is happening and shout out things like “tractor” and “frog” at the moment) but I think that around three years would be the perfect time to start sharing This is My Rock together, but before that I’m going to have a bit of a think about how to possibly role play it a bit with the kids in the hope that the message is taken on board.
Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of This is My Rock for the purposes of this review. All opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.
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